The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology

CHAPTER
4
What Happened in Sociology:
An Historical Model of
Structural Development

I have so far attempted to outline a few characteristics of the
utilitarian culture with which middle-class society began; I now
want to explore some ways in which these intertwined with the
development of sociology itself. In doing so, I also hope to secure
leverage for a broader analysis of the structure of Western sociology
and the dynamics of its development. Thus I shall be concerned
here not so much with the substantive content of specific theories
as with the historical development of sociology's shared infrastructures, its intellectual and social organization, its differentiation
and sponsorship by different nations and social classes, the division
of intellectual labor in which sociology has taken a part, and the
historical periods or stages in which these structures crystallized or
changed.

Much of what I say below shall be in the nature of flat assertions
concerning these structures and their development, rather than a
probing analysis or an historical documentation. In other words, it
is a preliminary effort at constructing a model about what happened to Western sociology. In effect, it is a theory of the development, and an outline for the history, of modern Western sociology.

There have been four major periods in the international development of Western sociology, which are here largely defined in terms
of the theoretical syntheses dominant in each:
Period I, Sociological Positivism, which began about the first
quarter of the nineteenth century in France and to which the key
contributors were Henri Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte;

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